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‘Streetcar’ in Paris, Hold the T-Shirt

PARIS — When the fabled Comédie-Française chose the first American play it would perform in its 330 years, producers promised a fresh French approach to Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire.”

They hinted that an androgynous Stanley Kowalski would trade his form-fitting T-shirt for a brief appearance in the nude. They debated whether Blanche DuBois and Stella should switch from traditional French accents to spicy Louisiana Creole.

But in the end — with firm guidance from a New York director with a long career in avant-garde theater — the company went for a fantasy world of sliding Japanese screens painted with menacing waterfalls and warriors, masked kurogo figures in black, and a longhaired Stanley in baggy pants and a satin tiger jacket. The undershirt? Replaced by a bath towel. It barely covers key parts of Stanley as he shouts for Stella, who descends toward him like a stringed puppet in billowing white drifts.

“How are you going to capture Tennessee in classical French?” asked Lee Breuer, the director, who took pains to adopt an approach quite different from Elia Kazan’s in the steamy 1951 film classic starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. “Have you heard Tennessee Williams without a Southern accent? It’s not easy, but we are using Orientalist Japanese, with its elegance and decadence, as a metaphor for the antebellum South.”

With the opening early this month of “Un Tramway Nommé Désir,” which is performed in French in a new translation and runs through June 2, the Comédie-Française has passed a milestone in a broader effort to raise its international profile. The troupe was founded by royal edict in 1680 and today is heavily subsidized by the state, with a $46.5 million annual budget.

Like other public institutions throughout Europe, it is searching for new sources of revenue and attendance as the state cuts back on cultural spending. “Our future is international, and it’s necessary to enrich our repertoire,” said Muriel Mayette, who since her appointment as the troupe’s administrator in 2006 has done things like introducing English subtitles for a Molière play. “I’ve told my actors that one day I would like to do a little piece from Molière in English. It’s difficult to perform another language because it’s not the same rhythm, but it’s like a costume.”

It was Ms. Mayette who pushed for the first American play in the troupe’s repertory and sought Mr. Breuer — who has had a long career with the avant-garde company Mabou Mines — to direct it.

In the French troupe’s cardinal-red and gold Salle Richelieu theater, Mr. Breuer took command with no qualms about directing actors in a language he didn’t know. It wasn’t the first time: last year he directed a Russian version of a Sam Shepard play.

Mr. Breuer, 74, roamed the theater with two translators, looking like a cat burglar in a black T-shirt and watch cap.

Photo

A scene from “A Streetcar Named Desire” staged at the Comédie-Française in Paris.Credit
Brigitte Enguerand/Fedephoto

Occasionally he shouted instructions laced with traces of an accent from Brooklyn, where he lives with his partner, the actress Maude Mitchell, the dramaturge and acting coach for “Streetcar.”

Mr. Breuer said he had pondered a variety of ways to bring the drowsy South of New Orleans to a Paris stage. Ultimately the Comédie-Française tinkered with text and pronunciations: Blanche is pronounced “Blahnche,” and the director changed a reference to her dream of retreating to the Left Bank of Paris to Rome, more exotic for a French audience.

More than 60 years ago, Jean Cocteau had staged the play in French in Paris and transformed it so that characters spoke with the southern accents of Marseille, a production that Williams scorned, saying, “I don’t understand why Cocteau filled my work with crudities.”

The Comédie-Française sought a middle ground within its Japanese setting inspired by 16th-century dogugaeshi sliding screens painted with menacing waterfalls and warriors. With a team of Americans — Basil Twist designed the sets, and John Margolis composed and performed music in homage to Fats Domino and James Carroll Booker III — the troupe gave up on Creole accents. Mr. Breuer said it was “impossible” to recreate the language. “It’s vanished, it’s gone,” he said.

On the lookout for signs and symbols that he considered jarring in an American play, Mr. Breuer focused on the belt of Éric Ruf, who plays a hip postmodern Stanley capable of changing his baby’s diaper and leering with a wicked smile modeled after Heath Ledger’s Joker in “The Dark Night.”

“Ce n’est pas Américain — c’est Français,” Mr. Breuer said, speaking the key French words that he has mastered. “That is not American. Take the belt. Move the buckle on the side.”

The actors in the Comédie-Française’s permanent troupe are accustomed to more fixed techniques, but Mr. Breuer was pushing them to make their own choices about how to act.

“In France, for reasons of time and production, we have a tendency to follow the road, and Lee works on the journey and the passage,” said Mr. Ruf, a member of the troupe since 1993. “We are generally very precise about movement and advancement. With him, we are improvising. For example, he said, ‘I want to see your sexuality,’ but there was nothing in the scene about it.”

After a week of performances, Parisians seem to be responding well to Mr. Breuer’s vision of “A Streetcar Named Desire” stirred in a cocktail shaker of bourbon and sake. The play is sold out through mid-April, with 65 tickets available an hour before each performance.

Critical reception, however, was mixed. Le Monde’s review ran under the headline “A Streetcar Stopped at the Boredom Station.” Le Figaro’s critic called the production “powerful, profound, grand and unique.” The reviewer for Les Echos was more measured, observing that no one could have dreamed that one day Tennessee Williams would crash the house of Molière.

Correction: February 16, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the musical role of John Margolis in a French production of "A Streetcar Named Desire." He composed original music for the show in homage to Fats Domino and James Carroll Book III and other musicians.

A version of this article appears in print on February 22, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Streetcar’ in French, Hold the T-Shirt. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe